Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 12:35:42 -0700
From: "Marlene R. Atleo" <maratleo-AT-island.net>
Subject: Re: Reply to -  re: word "choice"



At 08:31 AM 6/30/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Marlene R. Atleo wrote:
>>
>> Sorry to provide such a boring format for this conversation but since FL
>> had gone to such trouble I thought I had best try to keep some semblance of
>> coherence. MRA
>>
>> Discussants are: TD:Tim Durkin;  FL:Fragano S.J. Ledgister;
>> MRA: Marlene Atleo
>>
>> >>
>> TD <<I don't think that the hope of cultural survival for the colonized is
>> >> entirely false or out of reach. >
>>
>> MRA1 <<first of all I don't think cultures survive, cultures are
adaptive, so
>> >> of course they change; populations survive or don't survive; cultures
serve
>> >> the interests of populations; adaptive strategies in "receiving"
cultures
>> >> necessarily fall into a range of adaptations.  The Japanese
Christians can
>>
>> FLI <I change and adapt to circumstances, therefore I don't survive!
Cultures
>> >survive to the extent that those who share them perceive themselves to
>> >be part of a historical continuum:  thus there is an Arab culture seen
>> >from within as continuing in spite of the changes and adaptations made
>> >over centuries.
>>
>> MRA2 - Exactly, its the "people" who survive through cultural adaptation
>> and identification with culture and cultural institutions.  Is there "an"
>> Arab culture or many?  What about those people who are bi-cultural or
>> multi-cultural? Are they "surviving" or is the "culture" surviving.  What
>> are the essentials of the culture that survives?
>
>
>Cultures survive, obviously, because the people who live within and
>create them see them as surviving.  Obviously, also, we can fragment any
>entity into component and sub-component parts (and thus speak of
>Maghrebi culture, Christian Arab culture, westernised Arab culture und
>so weiter).  This, however, is to define the wood as its separate trees
>and to forget that there is also a sense of shared 'Arabness' which
>connects to the historical past (whether real or imagined) and to a
>historicised future (same caveats).
>

MRA3 - so if cultures survive...what is it that survives...or are
"cultures" the residuals of cultural logics adapted over time and most
concrete when articulated in a "homeland" or "place", are they a set of
memes that is evolving?


>> MRA1 -  be seen as a cultural experiment in which the christian teachings
>> fell onto
>> >> "fertile ground" and planted a bug in the minds/and hearts of those that
>> >
>> FLI > if you're going to use a metaphor get it right. Who the hell
plants bugs
>> >in fertile ground?
>>
>> MRA 2. Mixed metaphors expose the activity of hybridy of metaphor and
>> allows the exposure of the function of metaphor which brings together a
>> source and a target domain.  The thing I like about poco studies is that
>
>Hardly. They show a disconnection from the real world from which
>metaphors are taken. They also show a disdain for clarity of
>expression:  the kind of bug that is planted would not be placed in
>fertile ground; the kind of bug one might find in fertile ground has not
>been planted there.  In this particular case it is difficult to figure
>out whether you intended to mean 'seed' or whether you meant that
>Christianity was a means for westerners to find out what was going on
>inside Japanese society.
>

MRA3 - what real world? what clarity? I don't understand the world as being
so real and so clear that it is easily or readily written about but rather
that there can be conversations between perspectives about what we see as
being there.

>
>> metaphors get "un-done" in a way that the mapping between source and target
>> domain can be exposed.  Past living spaces and present living spaces are
>> brought together in brand new ways.  Good English writing obscures the
>> mapping process as does formal logic.  The above example uses "fertile
>> ground" in quotes from the Christian perspective and "a bug" from the way
>> it plays out for the characters in the novel.  Not everyone who
>> intrapsychically juggles more than one perspectives has to reveal them but
>> its being done more in poco literature.
>
>
>Curious. Why map the space between domains (assuming such a thing
>exists) rather than the domains themselves?
>
MRA3 - the unfolding of the spaces is where the action is.  Metaphors are
like a "smoke and mirrors" or slight of hand, a figure of speech.  What is
forgrounded is highly dependent on who is doing the foregrounding.
>
>> >
>> >
>> MRA1 >>received.  The issue is that it is a "forced choice" experiment of
>> >> necessity because of the intervention of a proselytizing culture.
What are
>> >> the motivations of proselytization?  I read in our evening newspaper
>> >> yesterday that the Catholic and Lutheran Churches have come together to
>> >> sort out the issue of "grace" over "good works" as the means to
salvation
>> >> and was pleased to see that the Catholic Church finally agreed that
it is
>> >> "by grace that salvation comes" and that "good works flow from
salvation".
>> >> Sounds like motivations for proselytization is self interest.
>>
>> FL1 - >Not from what you say. The reconciliation of the RC and Evangelical
>> >churches does not involve proselytising.
>>
>> MRA2 -  proselytizing has been a necessary medium of self interest for
>> salvation (good works route, e.g., all those JWs door knocking, etc ) which
>> the RC church (membership via baptism into Church as infant) has now toned
>> down through this "reconciliation" with the Lutherans (not by works but by
>> every word....) Mind you with the tax breaks this is a lot more fun (and
>> lucrative) through "charities" and "non-profit" societies - NGO's are
>> skyrocketing in number internationally doing works similar to those
>> previously done by churches, working through development
>> education/community development - outreaches to communist countries to
>> promote democracy are very popular.
>
>What's that got to do with it?

MRA3 - the promotion of democracy as "The Way, the Truth, and the Life." is
part of that legacy.

>>
>> TD >>But I believe that the victim/oppressor model advanced by some
keeps the
>> >> colonized in a perpetual state of colonization, allowing them little
hope
>> >> for cultural freedom, and can only get us so far in the study of these
>> >> cultures.>
>>
>>  MRA1 - >>2. the opposite of victim is victimizer, the opposite of
>> oppressed is
>> >> oppressor, the opposite of colonized is colonizer.  Post colonial
studies
>> >> is about understanding these dimensions of the processes at work.
>> >>
>> FL - Really? I take it, then, that po-co studies are heavily quantitative?
>> >
>> MRA2 - speaking to "TD's victim/oppressor model" most feminist studies
>> about the victimization dimensions of marital violence are are not
>> quantitative.   Political analysis can be both qualitative and quantitative
>> or either.  Poco is about what is behind the labels and for that the
>> relationships between the parties needs to be understood.  A label analysis
>> is a good place to start.
>
>
>To understand the 'dimensions of the processes' is to measure them,
>which requires their reduction to measurable (i.e., quantifiable)
>dimensions.  To understand the effects, both objective and subjective,
>is another matter.

MRA3 - I was thinking of the plural with reference to the "extent or scope
of particular aspects" rather than measures.
>
>
>>
>> TD >>...escape from utter and complete assimilation, western culture is
put in
>> >> a privileged position, identified as a kind of "irresistible force." >
>>
>> MRA1  3.  >Perhaps you can enlighten the "colonized/victimized/oppressed"
>> >about  how they can spend less time/energy/life/generations "struggling"
>> to >have their voices heard besides submitting to what ever comes in
sort of a
>> >> fatalistic attitude.
>>
>> FL >As one of the colonised/victimised/oppressed, I frankly wish that
>> >westerners would stop trying to tell me what to do and pigeonholing me
>> >in their sterile categories.  I also wouldn't mind nuclear weapons:
>> >history shows that western civilisation respects only violence.
>>
>> MRA2 -  TD seemed to be telling us "how" to understand ..."denying the
>> strength to overcome"....I tried not to get personal but to keep it at an
>> "academic level"..........but since you self identify as
>> "colonised/victimised/oppressed"... wishing (ok, not struggling) against
>> being labeled,  how is it that you wouldn't mind a nuclear weapon to comply
>> with historically standard ways to get respect from western civilization.
>
>Hmm. You appear to be arguing that colonialism in its pure, traditional,
>and direct form, vanished by magical means instead of as a result of
>armed resistance.

MRA3 - Hardly, since there don't seem to be any pure, traditional and
direct forms and of course nothing vanishes by magical means as a result of
armed resistance. 
>
>> If you are living or working in the US you could be seen as "under" Uncle
>> Sam's nuclear umbrella, or perhaps India or Pakistan may be places to "feel
>> more at ease" (more un classified and less sterile).
>
>Ah, the 'love it or leave it' argument.

MRA3 - the geographic solution is after all the solution of forced choice
for many.  I'm a Canadian and this is July 1st our national holiday.
Canadians don't have to love it or leave it.  We just muddle through.
>
>>
>> TD >> The empire is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and inescapable. >
>>
>> MRA1 >>4. The empire/center -the colony/margin dichotomy is about
>> colonizing the
>> >> life world of "others", its the discourse of modernity.  Its not the
>> >> "empire" that is "overwhelming, all-encompassing, and inescapable"
its the
>> >> version of such that has of necessity for survival been internalized.
 The
>> >> version that has allowed survival then needs constant revision as the
>> >> tactics of the dominant force/narrative changes.  This how  in
modernity we
>> >> have gotten the metaphor mixed up with the "thing".
>>
>> FL>There is an absolute 'discourse of modernity'? Evidence?
>> >
>> MRA2 - The enlightment/anti-enlightenment discourse of modernity was indeed
>> not absolute, how can anything that by some accounts spanned 2+ centuries
>> and by others almost one be absolute, but it becomes a reasonable facsimile
>> through the textualization and currently communicative dominance of the
>> west through multimedia.  Textualization especially tends to substitute
>> "text" for "experience".  Medium ass the message.  American films are
>> visually inhaled like Cok(a) (Cola).  In pomo/poco studies the tendency is
>> to interrogate the text/labels/etc to seek the underlying issues that the
>> labels obscure.  What do the labels of self identification obscure/reveal?
>
>Usually, but not always, that there is something labelled. MacLuhan, I
>suspect, would have found your typo as profoundly revelatory of meaning
>as 'the medium is the massage'. BTW, inhaling coca-cola (or, for that
>matter, Inca-Cola) could have profoundly tragic effects.  And surely all
>films (and novels, and poems, and plays, and songs &c.) are created to
>be consumed.
>
>>
MRA3 - I depend heavily on people and spell checks to correct my typos
(thanks), so there is nothing revelatory about it. 
"Consumption" is only half of the equation.  But then I suppose that
anonymous "massage" is being preferred by more.

>> TD - >> This places the culture of the colonized in a position of weakness,
>> >> denying it the strength to overcome, or at least survive, in the face of
>> >> the west.>
>>
>> MRA1 >> 5.  Over the long run or the short run?  Which "west"?  Would you
>> consider Chinese Marxism a 'western' colonization of the Chinese people?
>>
>> FL >I certainly would.
>>
>> MRA2 -   This is a political question of course: how is it a 'western
>> colonization' rather than a critical "choice"? (Someone told me recently
>> that Karl Marx asked Charles Darwin to write the forward to "Das Kapital"
>> but Chas. refused.)  Of course the perspective has shifted between TD & FL.
>
>Marx asked Darwin if he would accept the dedication of _Capital_ to him;
>Darwin declined. China has its own traditions; the  Chinese left did not
>seek to create social justice on the basis of Mencius

MRA3 - That goes to show just how often college profs get things right -
another half truth - gotta check up on them more!  I was just reading
something today about the relationship between the probability of
revolution to the lack of leadership by elites quoting Foran alluding to a
"new school" of scholarship that focusses on culture and ideology rather
than on political and economic structures without losing sight on the roles
of the later.  I certain consider such a dialectic a more productive way to
think about  how peoples work out their programs of "social justice".

>
>>
>> TD>> But there are more complex currents at work in this cultural
encounter.>
>>
>> MRA1 >> 6. This is I think the whole point.  The project of
>> modernity/colonialism
>> >> is about prediction and projection which requires parsimony and
stereotypy
>> >> - to narrow the gaze.  The project of post modernity/post colonialism
is in
>> >> part about recognizing the complexities and becoming self reflective
which
>> >> requires multiple perspectives and studied ambivalence., to broaden the
>> gaze.
>>
>> FL>In  order to see what? I would have thought that colonialism was about
>> >profit and power and modernity was simply a prejudice in favour of the
>> >way we do things now, as opposed to in the good old days.
>>
>> MRA2 > In order that the colonizer conserve a focus so as to maintain power
>> and increase profits.  In order that the colonized can see behind the
>> facade.  Is there anything really new under the sun/light?
>
>I'm confused, are you saying that we have to have unfocused vision in
>order to see behind the fa=E7ade?  To quote a West Indian (or should that
>be Westindian?) proverb, 'di higha monkey climb, di more him expose.'
>(The point is that the more powerful the dominant seem, the more their
>motives are clear to the dominated.)
>
MRA3 - There is much more to "see" than that with a good poco analysis.  Of
course if the metaphor is held in place and not deconstructed then the
facade will forever act like a "real" thing creating ambivalence in the
"dominated" that is too anxiety producing to overcome with anything other
than perhaps suicide or revolution or moving to another country to work
from the outside in, stay drunk or drugged for a lifetime or.... there are
most likely a lot of other ways to absorb the anxiety of the ambivalence.

>
>>
>> TD >> If we restrict ourselves to the example of christianity and
>> colonization,
>> >> we can see more clearly a pattern of resistance and survival that cannot
>> >> always be denied colonized cultures.>
>>
>> MRA1>> 7. So why is it they westerners look to colonized cultures to read
>> their
>> >> own colonizing programs.  "Its like wow" these are the effects in this
>> >> place!  What about looking at the process rather than the objectifying
>> >> outcomes because the other confounding aspects are pretty difficult to
>> >> partition out.
>>
>> FL>The outcomes are not part of the process?
>>
>> MRA2>>Of course they are teleos of the process but the problem is that the
>> teleos is read backwards with familiar processes projected into the march
>> to outcomes.
>
>I see your point (though I think you don't mean to be that
>deterministic!)
>
>>
>> TD> > If we look at Endo again, the idea that some Japanese became
christians
>> >> and some didn't seems to speak to a kind of cultural survival.  Japanese
>> >> people were brought into contact with western christianity and made a
>> >> choice (perhaps decision would be a less charged term?) to embrace it or
>> not.>
>>
>> MRA1 >> 8.  This is where a lot of micro research needs to be done.  Who,
>> how, when
>> >> , why - what was the survival demand structure in which they "chose"?
 The
>> >> Lower Mainland of British Columbia is currently experiencing a huge
>> >> Christian boom among the immigrant Chinese population that have come to
>> >> Canada recently. The Canadians have left the churches in droves but the
>> >> immigrant christians are filling the old churches and building new ones.
>> >> Those with a Christian background would more likely immigrate from Hong
>> >> Kong and Taiwan.  My experience has been that the church serves a
similar
>> >> purpose to the village in that it provides a framework for social
economies
>> >> that are lost or disrupted in the move to a new land and the underlying
>> >> master narrative that the "home" population has somehow mislaid.
>>
>> FL >As opposed to an assimilative function (which seems rather more
likely)?
>>
>> MRA2>>The accommodation to the culture of a western nation state through
>> the "safe frame" of a Chrisitian ideology will probably temper the process
>> and provide advantages to the acculturating group.  Canadian
>> multiculturalism policy is trying non-"melting pot" tactics which I suspect
>> will allow a much quicker accommodation process.  It used to take 3
>> generations for European immigrants to make the transition into
>> "mainstream" Anglo-Canadian society.   Now with multiculturalism there is a
>> continuous whine by not only Anglo-Canadians but also descendents of other
>> European immigrants for the structural assistance given more recent
>> immigrants.  The Canadian state needs those families to accommodate more
>> quickly to new economic and social roles evolving in a transnational global
>> economy.  A three generation wait would be too high a price to pay.  The
>> population economics demands an accelorated accommodation process.
>> Transnationals who have experienced colonialism and have moved into this
>> supposedly "de-colonizing" zone find more ready access to social, political
>> and economic participation.  Of course the "settler" population of the
>> first waves of colonization are feeling colonized.
>
>We appear to be  in agreement here. It would be interesting to know
>which churches are being favoured.
>
MRA3 - seems to be across the board but there are some HUGE brand new
evangelical churches along side of Sikh and Hindu temples.  In Vancouver
the various chinese dialects are now spoken more in homes than is English.
>
>>
>> TD > > <Endo chronicles the encounter, saying that many did because they
could
>> >> easily fit christianity into their existing belief system, replacing or
>> >> revising the vision of their sun god to incorporate the identity of the
>> >> judeo-christian deity.  For these, christianity soon blended in
completely;
>> >> its effects were few and short-lived (the west was actually
>> assimilated!). >
>> >>
>> >> <Some Japanese people actually embraced christianity as a different
>> >> religion altogether.  These people were few, though, and without the
>> >> support of a larger christian community (and missionary work, which was
>> >> eventually outlawed), their numbers became even fewer.  The west doesn't
>> >> always win.>
>> >>
>> >> Even in more traditional colonial situations, the cultural dominance
of the
>> >> west is rarely complete.  In America, for example, Louise Erdrich writes
>> >> about native americans who were brought into contact with
christianity.  In
>> >> her book, _Love Medicine_, her characters variously embrace and scorn
>> >> christianity.  Michel deCerteau actually employs the situation of
colonized
>> >> native americans in speaking about power relationships within
society.  He
>> >> describes the uses they put christianity to and the different ways they
>> >> practised it as "tactics",  ways to mark out one's own space in a world
>> >> that is relentlessly expanding and enclosing.
>>
>> MRA1 >> 9.  a) A little Piaget/Vygotsky is useful here, e.g., rate and
pace of
>> >> assimilation/accommodation (in the psychological/sociological sense).
 b)
>> >> Comparing and contrasting Japan, an island nation that has remained very
>> >> homogeneous compared to a nation like the US which is having increasing
>> >> problems "absorbing" immigrants, "vanishing races" redeemed by Mormon
>> >> doctrine and the "leavening" in their midst.  c) The make-up of the
>> >> identity of group oriented peoples allows the holding of conflicting
>> >> perspectives in ways that would be a psychic challenge to individuals
who
>> >> are individually oriented.
>> >
>> FL>This is a bit opaque.
>> >
>> MRA2 - >> not everything can be seen at one level of analysis.  The
>> processes of colonization may better be understood by looking at different
>> levels of analysis.  Interdiciplinarity is also an important trend.  TD's
>> examples (Japan - Native Americans) as incomplete colonizations denies the
>> differences of the power dimensions of the "incompleteness" as functions of
>> the historical periods and policy under which they occurred.  The power
>> dimension as FL/you/(s)he noted above is key.  However incomplete the
>> colonization, the power dimension evokes the feelings of  domination that
>> can suck up the energy that wishes for "nuclear weapons".  I like Apter's
>> Reversal Theory of meta-motivational modes to understand some of how this
>> plays out.  http://www.swin.edu.au/ssb/rt
>
>
>Short of killing the dominated, all exercises of power are incomplete
>because the subordinate continues to recognise his/her difference from
>the superordinate and to use that difference as a means to focus
>identity/resistance/assimilation/separation (perhaps all at the same
>time).

MRA3 - coming full circle - getting back to Endo - while he was born in
Japan ('23) he lived his early life in Manchuria as the child of an
oppressor.  His parents were divorced and then his mother converted to
Catholicism when they were back in Japan.  He and his brother converted
later.  He didn't fight in the war and afterwards became a prolific writer
after he studied in France.  Endo started life as an "auslands" Japanese.
Endo had a lot of "differences" to reconcile which it seems that he worked
on in his novels and it seems many could identify with his struggle.
Battaglia sees "self" as an idological process and selfhood as culturally
situated and emergent in social practices of pursuasion.  Endo's relational
self was already disrupted.  A personal relationship with Christ is one way
I have hear people talk about meeting the needs of such a disruption.
Relating to the world through such a relationship allows an "aloofness"
about the intimate social and cultural work that tradition demands.  It
supposedly frees individuals from minutae to pursue "higher goals".  I see
this as another forced choice in which intrapsychic conflicts require
social solutions and the social contract implied in organized religion fills.

>>
>> TD >> <It would seem to me that the denial of choice and the perpetuation
>> of the
>> >> victim/oppressor model denies any kind of freedom or hope of cultural
>> >> recovery to the colonized.  It keeps them in a position of relative
>> >> weakness and despair.  I would claim that, included in the "BIGGER
picture"
>> >> are the smaller things, the choices/decisions/tactics practiced by the
>> >> colonized in order to keep their culture alive.>
>>
>> MRA1>> 10.  I would suggest the "BIGGER picture" requires the colonizer not
>> become
>> >> just conscious but self conscious in the light of history and self
and that
>> >> the colonized become not just self conscious but conscious at a meta
>> >> cultural level before a post colonial discourse can develop.  There are
>> >> definite reciprocities but the ground is far from level.  The strategic
>> >> communication otherwise cannibalizes another generation usually of the
>> >> colonized.
>>
>> FL>'A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude; it just pounces.' -- Wole
>> >Soyinka
>>
>> MRA2 >> Animal models are useful.  First Nations people tell stories about
>> animals so that we can be self conscious rather than merely
>> reactive....reactivity and nuclear weapons can be a pretty...well, reactive
>> combination.
>
>What do you really mean? Are you saying, for example, that Toussaint
>L'Ouverture should have chosen a different (and peaceful) way to change
>his condition? That Menelik should have confronted the Italians with
>metaphors rather than bullets? That Giap should have engaged the French
>in the pages of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ rather than in the hills
>around Dien Bien Phu.

MRA3 - What I am saying is  - Would they do the same thing today and I
think the answer is no.
>
>I feel (and I may be wrong) that the anger generated by India's nuclear
>tests has more to do with the fact that Indians tend to have dark skins
>than with fear of nuclear proliferation.  I will confess to being
>worried about nuclear escalation in the Indian subcontinent; I will also
>confess to being one of those who cheered when the Indians detonated
>their first test device in 1974.

MRA3 - I agree about the anger generated by the dark skins.....who knows
what "dark skinned people really think, or will do....".  Mind you (as a
Canadian) I have always loved the name of the reactor "Can-do".  For
analogical thinkers its just the "best name" for a potential weapon.

>What, pray tell, is wrong with saying that the oppressed have the right
>(perhaps the duty) to oppose force with countervailing force? Does that
>wonderful phrase from the Internationale, 'foule esclave debout, debout'
apply only to the oppressed of the West?

MRA3 - tactically? in the long or the short run? as individuals or
collectives?  I guess its ok if the individual is sacrificed for the
collective but it seems that there is another program going on in which
individuals as representatives of collectives are developing diversities
that don't require waves of people to overtly sacrifice themselves but just
to die off through hunger, starvation and disease and local "skirmishes".



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